with tumblr suppressing the palestine tag and pushing pro-zionist propaganda through their ads, the least people here can do is disable their checkmarks/badges and stop buying more
I am a 27 year old electrical engineer who works in a little secret lab in the middle of buttfuck Egypt. For one two month period, the office supply order changed from normal erasers to these, and I will not lie - every time I thought I was alone, I would sneak one out of my desk and eat it. They looked delicious. Tasted mid, but the appearance was so stunning that my brain just kept thinking, surely, the rest were a fluke, but THIS TIME it will taste like fruit and sugar.
Anyway, eventually the order stopped, and I was very worried that somehow, they’d found out that I was eating their erasers. So I kind of casually brought it up to my manager that I was sad that they swapped the erasers out, and he was like “yeah, but I kept eating them so they couldn’t stay.”
hey not sure if i said but yknow the pit post? the pit post. anyway onetime i was fucking around and was like heyyy what if i said "i know this pit" and the guy reblogged it and tried to get me to go to the pit (i do not know the pit i live in hell away from the pit) i felt so bad but i didn't wanna say i was just fucking around though so i said fuck that im not getting murdered at the pit??? and he gave up but i felt so bad. im a better person now, i find that shit so funny
every morning i wake up and every morning i delete pathetic lil pissbaby youtube comments that say something like this its honestly a highlight of my morning
One thing about fandom culture is that it sort of trains you to interact with and analyze media in a very specific way. Not a BAD way, just a SPECIFIC way.
And the kind of media that attracts fandoms lends itself well (normally) to those kinds of analysis. Mainly, you’re supposed to LIKE and AGREE with the main characters. Themes are built around agreeing with the protagonists and condemning the antagonists, and taking the protagonists at their word.
Which is fine if you’re looking at, like, 99% of popular anime and YA fiction and Marvel movies.
But it can completely fall apart with certain kinds of media. If someone who has only ever analyzed media this way is all of a sudden handed Lolita or 1984 or Gatsby, which deal in shitty unreliable narrators; or even books like Beloved or Catcher in the Rye (VERY different books) that have narrators dealing with and reacting to challenging situations- well… that’s how you get some hilariously bad literary analysis.
I dont know what my point here is, really, except…like…I find it very funny when people are like “ugh. I hate Gatsby and Catcher because all the characters are shitty” which like….isnt….the point. Lololol you arent supposed to kin Gatsby.
I would definitely argue that it’s specifically a bad way….a very bad way.
Depending on the piece of media, it could be the intended way to interpret it and thus very effective. When I watch Sailor Moon, I know at the end of the day that Usagi is a hero. She is right, and her choices are good. She and the Sailor Scouts may make mistakes, and those mistakes can have consequences, but by presuming the goodness of the protagonists, I can accurately describe what actions and values the story is presenting as good. (Fighting evil by moonlight. Winning love by daylight. Never running from a real fight. Etc etc)
If I sit around and hem and haw about whether or not Usagi is actually the villain because she is destined to reinstate a magical absolute monarchy on Earth in the future, then I’m not interpreting it correctly. I can write a cool fanfic about it, but it wont be a successful analysis of the original work.
But like I said, that doesnt work for all pieces of media, and being able to assess how a piece of media should be analyzed is a skill in itself.
I was an English major. One of our required classes was Theory & Criticism, and I ended up hating it specifically because of the teacher and the way she taught it, but the actual T&C part of it was interesting. And one of the things we learned about was all the different ways of reading/interpreting/criticizing media - not just books, ANY form of media.
Specifically, I remember when we read The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James. We had special editions of the book where the first half of it was the novel itself, and the last half was like five or six different critical analyses of the book from different schools of theory. The two I remember specifically were a Marxist interpretation and a feminist interpretation. I remember reading both of those and thinking “wow, these people are really reaching for some of this”, but the more I read into the analysis and the history of those schools of thought, the more I got it. So for my final paper for that class, I wrote an essay that basically had the thesis of “when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”. If you have trained yourself to view every piece of media through a single specific critical lens - well, you’re going to be only viewing it through that lens, and that means you’re going to read or watch it in such a way that you’re looking for the themes you’ve trained yourself to look for.
My teacher didn’t like that, by the way; she’d wanted each of us to pick one of these schools of thought we’d been learning about and make it “our” school of thought. She wanted us to grab the a hammer, or a screwdriver, or a spanner, and carry that with us for the rest of our lives. She somehow didn’t expect me to pack a toolbox.
My point is: Like OP said, sometimes the tool you need is a hammer. Sometimes you need a screwdriver. Sometimes you can make a hammer work where what you need is a screwdriver, but you’re going to end up stripping the screw; sometimes you can use a screwdriver in place of a hammer, but it’s going to take a lot more effort and brute force and you risk breaking the screwdriver. Sometimes you need a wrench and trying to use a hammer or screwdriver is going to make you declare that the bolt is problematic and should never be used by anyone. Sometimes what you really need is a hand saw, and trying to use any of the others…well, you can, but it’s going to make a mess and you might not be able to salvage the pieces left over.
These skills aren’t being taught in school anymore and you can see it in the way high school aged kids act about media and stuff.
They wouldn’t survive something like Lolita because I swear they’re being taught to turn their brains OFF and be spoon fed all their thoughts by someone else.
It’s really creepy.
I promise these skills are taught in school. I’m an English teacher. In a school. Who teaches them.
Now, Lolita is generally reserved for college classes. But a lot of the rationale behind continuing to teach the “classics” in high school (beyond the belief that a shared literary foundation promotes a better understanding of allusions and references) is that a lot of the classics are built on these kinds of complex readings and unreliable narrators and using historical and cultural context helps in their analysis. (I do think that we should be incorporating more diverse and modern lit into these classes, please understand)
Do all schools or individual teachers do this *well*? No, of course not. Do all students always really apply themselves to the development of deep critical thinking skills when their teacher pulls out A Tale of Two Cities? Also no.
But this isnt a “public school is failing / evil ” problem. Being able to engage in multiple forms and styles of analysis is a really high level skill, and my post was just about how a very common one doesnt always work well with different kinds of stories.
OP, why do you describe analyzing Sailor Moon in a different way than (you assume) the author intended as “hemming and hawing?” I would argue there’s a lot of value in approaching texts at a different angle.
Because ignoring context, tone, and intent when analyzing media is going to lead to conclusions are aren’t consistently supported by the text you are looking at.
“Usagi is a villain because she’s a queen and I think absolute monarchy is bad” ignores the way that Usagi, the moon kingdom, and basically all aspects of the lore are actually framed within the story. None of the characters’ actions or motivations make consistent sense if we start from the assumptions that “Usagi = monarchist=evil” and it would cause you to over look all the themes and interpretations that DO make consistent sense.
At some point you have to take a work at face value and see what it is trying to say.
Is the breakdown of monarchy actually relevant to the themes and messages presented in Sailor Moon? No, not really.
So focusing on the Moon Kingdom monarchy and the ethics there of is sort of… besides the point. The Moon Kingdom is a fairy tale, not a reflection of reality.
I’m not actually interested in the tax policy of the Moon Kingdom, you know?
Now, is it *cool* to look at works in various ways? Sure! Are some people interested in the tax policy of the Moon Kingdom and want to explore what that would look like? Sure! And honestly if you want to explore the ramifications of idyllic fairy tale monarchies on the real world, then that’s really cool too!
But if you are looking at a work to understand what it is trying to say with the text itself, then you need to take some of its premises at face value. Usagi and the Sailor Scouts being the Good Guys is one of those premises.
And really the “Usagi is secretly a princess from the moon” is just a part of the escapist fantasy for most little kids watching more than it has anything to do with actual themes of monarchy.
There is a lot of value in being able to look at a text from various angles. And it’s perfectly okay to use a text and concept as a jumping off point for other explorations.
But the problem comes when people say that Usagi was definitively a villain in Sailor Moon, or that say Steven Universe with themes of family and conflict resolution is excusing genocide by not destroying the Diamonds. It misses the point of the fantasy. It misses the important themes, the lessons and point of the show to look at it like that.
Basically: reinterpretations are cool, but you gotta know how to take a work on its own premises too.
Exactly. Like, magical princess that shows how monarchies (or the idea of princesses in general) is broken or toxic? Utena and Star vs The Forces of Evil are right there.
The idea of a cute talking cat granting girls magical powers to turn them into warriors against evil and getting them killed being evil? Not a good take on Luna, but Kyuubei in Madoka? Exactly this. That’s like, the point of Kyuubei- to riff on the trope that Luna, and Kero, and Mokona represent.
Media can raise all sorts of interesting conversations and discussions and ideas. But there’s a very real difference between trying to awkwardly force those readings on a work where the tone and framing and context don’t support it and acting like the media is actually supporting those messages, and using those ideas to explore it in a different work or to analyze the trope across the genre more broadly.
Moral and pure does not a protagonist make, and fandom is rife with that exclusive interpretation of storytelling. OP makes really good points; this thread is one of the best analyses I’ve read about lit crit on this site lately.
Stories aren’t made in a vacuum– every trope/theme/character archetype comes from somewhere and (general) you do yourself a disservice by viewing everything as whether it’s morally uncorrupted or not.
Business Names in the 1800s: Primary Flour, Just Cement, Worldwide Copper, The Only Gasoline You Should Be Allowed To Buy
Business Names in the 1900s: Axiom, Artemis Manufacturing, Pinnacle Hygienics, Olympian Glue, Divine Yogurt, The Coolest Car Manufacturer With The Largest Hog In Town
Business Names in the 2000s: Gubi, Turna, Clooper, Jumbli, Dongr, Shnet, Pungu, Pooble, Weeeu
Getting a new follower and finding out they’re a terf is kind of like getting a new follower only to realize it’s a porn bot, but a thousand times worse.
Porn bots don’t give a fuck about my content or who I am, but this terf actually scrolled through my blog and thought, “yes, this is a person whose opinions I’d like to see more of.” It makes me feel super fucking gross and that I’m probably not doing enough to support trans women.
So just for the record: trans women are women. The existence of trans women does not detract from my womanhood or the womanhood of anybody else. This is not a blog for people who believe otherwise. Take your transphobia elsewhere.
And, to my followers: please help me stay accountable. If I reblog something that marginalizes trans people (or sex workers or POC or anyone else), please let me know so that I can make amends.
PSA if you’re a terf and you follow me please just … don’t. Thanks.
Y’ALL HAVE TIME TO REBLOG THIS. IT TAKES LESS THAN FIVE SECONDS.
And not needing to always explain that yes, we do love and respect children.
Women (or just about anyone) have a right to not have children.
Children are a choice and honestly sometimes people feel they will be bad parents and some people just honestly aren’t cut out to be parents so please don’t tell them that “You’ll be a great parent!” Because not everyone is and it is good that they know themselves.
YES. i do love children! they’re sweet, in small doses. they’re cute. but the responsibility of raising a whole human being?? shaping who they’re going to be in the future?? as of now, my answer is an immediate hell no.
“but they’re cute” if i wanted something cute to display on my mantle i’d get one of those kitschy miniature kitten figurines. it’s an awful lot cheaper too, and much less upkeep.
sometimes it’s not even “he would not fucking say that”. sometimes it’s “he would not fucking say that. nobody would ever fucking say that. nobody talks like that. have you ever spoken to another human being”
In love with this random guy who had a lock slapped on his storage unit for not paying its rental and not only did he ignore management and took his stuff out without paying, but also chose to steal the lock itself and send it to the LockPickingLawyer along with a confession letter
i tried to hire a hypeman and the cheapest one (free) was a fucking wizard and now i cant get rid of her. she keeps saying shit like “she speaketh true” and “very wise milady” everytime i say fuckin anything and if she sees a car she tries to attack it with chain lightning. fucking embarassing honestly
Did I ever tell you folks about the time I saved Sesame Street?
Back in 2002, I was attending the University of Oregon (my second go at college, and my third school) and had the morning off from classes, and was idly flipping channels (because people used to do that) and landed on PBS as Sesame Street came on.
Now, I grew up on Sesame Street, and I’m still a big fan of the layers of humor they manage, so I figured I’d watch a bit and probably flip away if I got bored. In the street segment, Oscar the Grouch was watching some grouch TV station as it played an ad for an amusement park, something like “Sick Flags Over Yuckyworld”, and in this ad, in that early internet time, they included a URL: yuckyworld.org .
I thought this was hilarious, and particularly loved the fact that it was a .org domain, so I got on my computer to see what CTW/Sesame Workshop had put up.
They hadn’t put anything up.
They’d neglected to register the domain.
I immediately had horrific visions of what might show up there. Anybody could snap the name up. 4chan wasn’t around yet, but it was the heyday of Something Awful and rotten.com, and I had huge fears of somebody putting up some shock site just in time to hit the afternoon broadcast.
So I registered the domain myself, and within 15 minutes or so had a barebones site up, just a text affair to hold the place, explaining what had gone on and letting the showrunners know that I’d give them the site if they contacted me.
They did indeed contact me by the next day, and I arranged to transfer the domain back to them. I think the situation was that they’d intended to register the domain — the next segment was Oscar getting an adult to help him look up the site on the web, so it was intended as a teaching thing — but paperwork had gotten lost and the episode aired before the site was ready. I got some nice letters from parents thanking me for looking out for their kids, and the SesameStreet.com folks sent me a t-shirt, a mug, and one of those “autographed” photos of the Muppet cast.
So, anyway, that’s my contribution to children’s television history.
awww that’s wonderful
Penny rose thanks you from the depth of her soul as do I
i literally fucking blinked and this shit happened istg y’all are insane—
Fuck it. Spread this post to every nook and cranny on tumblr. Prove to everyone that this site is ALIVE and FLOURISHING and that it will last for fucking DECADES
i literally fucking blinked and this shit happened istg y’all are insane—
Fuck it. Spread this post to every nook and cranny on tumblr. Prove to everyone that this site is ALIVE and FLOURISHING and that it will last for fucking DECADES
Anyone with a vag knows what I’m talking about but I fucking love when you wake them up and they look so tired and out of it and they just look weird its so fucking funny
I feel like when I say ‘relatable’ what I really mean is ‘resonant.’ I don’t want characters who I feel are like me, I want characters who have emotions so strong I can feel them through the page.
I think this is important because a lot of us forget the power of stories to make us feel things about characters who are not like us, who have experienced things that we never will. The purpose of listening to someone else’s story should not necessarily be identification, but understanding.
